Industrial Revolution 4.0: the Human Resource Practices

Abstract

The trend of Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR 4.0) has been emerged since the year of 2011 by German government. In this IR 4.0 era, automatization is emphasized in the particular industry. With the invention of high technologies on machines in organizations, the practices and business models of organizations would be impacted. The human resource practitioners might be facing several challenges in organizations, such as lacking of skilled workforce in managing the high-technology machines, as well as the employees’ retention in this fast changing working environment. The human resource officers need to ensure that the employees are equipped with the updated knowledge and skills in order to operate the machines. Besides, human resource development is also playing a vital role in IR 4.0. Effective human resource practices could improve the working environment in the era of IR 4.0 by promoting the creativity of employees. Therefore, it could be seen that, in human resource aspects, human resource practices are concerned in organizations in order to match with the trend of IR 4.0. However, there is a lacking of discussion on the aspect of human resource practices, where most of the studies discussed on the technologies aspect of IR 4.0. Hence, this paper intends to discuss the human resource practices that could assist organizations in achieving the goal of IR 4.0.